Power tariff for both domestic and industrial consumers across the segments has been increased in Andhra Pradesh from April 1. Andhra Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission (APERC) issued the tariff orders effective for the year 2012-13 after taking into account the Annual Revenue Requirement (ARR) filed by the four state-owned discoms in December last year.

The tariff hike is expected to put an additional Rs 3,434.89 crore in the hands of power utilities as against Rs 4,950 crore indicated in the tariff proposals. Discoms had proposed to mop up Rs 35,062 crore in 2012-13 as compared to an estimated Rs 24,000 crore revenues in the current year.

Power utilities had projected an overall revenue-expenditure gap of Rs 6,103 crore as the basis for seeking tariff revision for the year. However, APERC reportedly tweaked some of these proposals while asking the power utilities to meet part of the revenue deficit by improving internal efficiencies. This is in addition to the over Rs 5,000-crore subsidy support being extended by the state government.Under the domestic category, the unit charge of Rs 1.45 for 0-50 unit slab is left untouched while tariff for other slabs have been revised to Rs 2.60 per unit (Rs 2.40) for 51-100 units, Rs 3.60 per unit (Rs 3.05 per ) for 101-200 unit slab, Rs 5.75 per unit (Rs 4.75) to 201-300 unit slab, Rs 6.75 per unit (Rs 6 ) to 301-500 unit slab and Rs 7.25 per unit for consumption beyond 500 units.

On the industrial front, under high-tension-1 category, the unit charges increased to Rs 4.80 from Rs 3.52 for drawl of power at 11 kv level, to Rs 4.37 from Rs 3.25 at 33 kv , and to Rs 3.97 from Rs 2.97 at 132 kv.The demand charges at Rs 250 per KVA and time of day charges remained unchanged.

The power utilities proposed an annual supply requirement of 93,913 million units(mu) out of which the procurement from the approved stations would be around 81,464 mu and remaining power is proposed to be purchased through medium and short term bidding for 2,000 mw of power from other sources.